Lyft's IPO Filing May Be Too Late

But that is not stopping the ride-sharing service from filing a confidential offering to sell an unspecified number of shares in March 2019.

Lyft filed initial IPO paperwork with the SEC -- with the idea of going public in March or April of 2019, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Lyft -- which makes takes a commission on rides booked through its app -- was valued at $15.1 billion in its latest private capital round. It has raised a total of $4.9 billion in capital in 18 rounds, according to CrunchBase.

Meanwhile, since its peak in August, the NASDAQ has lost 13% of its value -- tumbling from 8,110 to 7,054. And the factors driving down the NASDAQ could continue -- especially if Apple and Facebook continue to suffer from their company-specific problems exacerbated, in part, by the trade war with China.

If the NASDAQ continues to fall steadily, this spring could be a very unhospitable environment for money-losing technology companies.

And that could make it likely that Lyft may need to raise another round of private funding instead of going public.

The good news is that Lyft is growing faster and losing less money than Uber. The Journal reported that Lyft's third quarter 2018 revenues popped 88% to $563 million coupled with a whopping $254 million net loss. That is much faster growth than Uber -- which saw revenue increase 38% to $2.95 billion with a $1.07 billion loss.

Lyft has nearly $5.7 billion worth of cash on its balance sheet, according to the Journal.

If Lyft burns through about $2.8 billion in cash a year -- assuming that its adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of $712 million in the most recent quarter is annualized -- Lyft will have enough cash to last it another two years.

Since consumers are so familiar with its brand, it would have a huge edge over unprofitable technology companies that sell technologies that are not well known to retail investors.

So, if Lyft can go public in the spring and it keeps growing at its current rate, I would not be surprised to see its valuation at nearly double where it was this June thanks to its 88% revenue growth rate.

Unfortunately, my sense is that the market dynamics over the last two months will continue to be very turbulent -- and probably get even more so.

It's a good thing that Lyft has two years' worth of cash on its balance sheet. It may need all of it to keep operating if the IPO window is slammed shut when Spring 2019 rolls around.

I ditched corporate America in 1994 and started a management consulting and venture capital firm (http://petercohan.com). I began following stocks in 1981 when I was in grad school at MIT and first analyzed tech stocks as a guest on CNBC in 1998. I became a Forbes contribut...